The present disclosure relates to monitoring environmental parameters and, in some embodiments, trading environmental parameter allowances, and more specifically, to methods and systems for collecting, analyzing, acquiring and storing environmental parameter data in a distributed database that maintains a growing list of ordered records.
Carbon trading markets provide a financial incentive to reduce carbon emissions. For example, companies may be allowed a certain amount of carbon dioxide (a threshold limit) that they may emit over the course of a specific period of time. Companies emitting more carbon dioxide than the threshold limit may purchase a right to emit additional carbon from another company whose carbon emission allowance is then reduced by the amount purchased. Thus, the total amount of carbon emission allocations remains the same. However, these markets can be fragmented and disparate, which may lead to suboptimal carbon trading. For example, lack of proper standards for carbon emission measuring techniques leads to a drop in consumer confidence which further results in a suboptimal performance of the carbon trading market. Additionally, the carbon trading market relies on carbon emission data that may be prone to error. For example, one currently used carbon emission calculation process utilizes a number of intermediaries between carbon allocation buyer and seller which may lead to inaccuracies.